# The book Divyavadana refers to the persecution of Buddhists by Pushyamitra Sunga.

# The capture of power by Pushyamitra Sunga shows the triumph of Brahmins.

# The book Divyavadana cannot be relied upon since it was during the time of Pushyamitra Sunga that the Sanchi and Barhut stupas were completed.

# The victory of Pushyamitra Sunga clearly shows that the last of the Mauryas was an incompetent ruler since he was overthrown in the very presence of his army, and this had nothing to do with brahminical reaction against Asoka's patronage of Buddhism.

According to Vincent Arthur Smith, Pushyamitra Sunga was of Iranian origin because his Sungas carried " mitra " suffix in their first names.

sv: Pushyamitra Sunga

Pushyamitra the first ruler of the Sunga Dynasty built great Buddhist topes at Sanchi in 188 BC.

In 185 BC, the last Mauryan ruler was assassinated by Pushyamitra Sunga, the Commander-in-Chief of the Mauryan armed forces.

The story is in fact given in two near contemporaneous ( 2nd century A. D .) Buddhist histories, the Asokâvadâna and the Divyâvadâna ; the two narratives are almost verbatim the same and very obviously have a common origin. 5 This non-contemporary story ( which surfaces more than three centuries after the alleged facts ) about Pushyamitra ’ s offering money for the heads of Buddhist monks is rendered improbable by external evidence: the well-attested historical fact that he allowed and patronized the construction of monasteries and Buddhist universities in his domains, as well as the still-extant stupa of Sanchi. 6 After Ashoka ’ s lavish sponsorship of Buddhism, it is perfectly possible that Buddhist institutions fell on slightly harder times under the Sungas, but persecution is quite another matter.

He defeated the Pushyamitra threat, but then was faced with invading Hephthalites or " White Huns ", known in India as the Sweta Huna, from the northwest.

Haraprasad Sastri contends that the revolt by Pushyamitra was the result of brahminical reaction against the pro-Buddhist policies of Ashoka and pro-Jaina policies of his successors.

Also if Pushyamitra was really a representative of brahminical reaction he neighbouting kings would have definitely given him assistance.

Still another view regarding of the decline of Mauryas was that the coup of Pushyamitra was a peoples ' revolt against Mauryans oppression and a rejection of the Maurya adoption of foreign ideas, as far interest in Mauryan Art.

His suggestion was that Pushyamitra, though a Hindu was a worshiper of the god Mitra which the Persians in the time period popularly did.

Also " Mitra " suffix was not given to all the successors of Pushyamitra which means that " Mitra " suffix has nothing to do with any ancestry or surname.

According to the Buddhist Divyavadana, Pushyamitra was lineally descended from the Mauryas.

* Koenraad Elst, Why Pushyamitra was more " secular " than Ashoka Article on the alleged Hindu persecution of Buddhism by Pushyamitra

In his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in India, Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar opined that Manu Smriti was written by a sage named Brigu during the times of Pushyamitra of Sangha in connection with social pressures caused by the rise of Buddhism.

Among the detractors is Romila Thapar, who writes that archaeological evidence casts doubt on the claims of Buddhist persecution by Pushyamitra.

She writes that archaeological evidence casts doubt on the claims of Buddhist persecution by Pushyamitra.

If we take Buddhist writings as evidence, which describe the mass slaughter of Buddhists by the Brahmin ruler Pushyamitra, then Saharanpur must have been under the Shunga regime, at least during his reign.

According to Raichaudhuri, the Guptas were related to queen Dharini of Agnimitra, wife of the son of king Pushyamitra Shunga.

It has been suggested that Pushyamitra may have destroyed the original stupa, and his son Agnimitra rebuilt it.

Brihaspati's son Vrishasena, Vrishasena's son Pushyadharma and Pushyadharma's son Pushyamitra. Also, Most of the Puranas say in unison that Commander Pushyamitra got the throne after killing his master Brihadratha Maurya.

But this shows his strong ties with the Shunga ruler Pushyamitra and Agnimitra who have just started their rule after uprooting the Mauryans.

According to him, Divyavadana proves that there is the gap of five generations between Ashoka and Pushyamitra Shunga.

But It is impossible because Pushyamitra sit on throne in 184 BCE and Ashoka died in 232 BCE.

The traditional narratives are dated to two centuries after Pushyamitra ’ s death in Asokâvadâna and the Divyâvadâna, Buddhist books of legend.

The Kanva dynasty replaced the Sunga dynasty, and ruled in the eastern part of India from 71 BC to 26 BC.

The Kanva dynasty replaced the Sunga dynasty in Magadha, and ruled in the eastern part of India from 75 BCE to 30 BCE.

* Lyal S. Sunga, Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations.

Buddhist records such as the Asokavadana write that the assassination of Brhadrata and the rise of the Sunga empire led to a wave of persecution for Buddhists, and a resurgence of Hinduism.

* Lyal S. Sunga Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations, Nijhoff ( 1992 ) 252 p.

The motif was adopted extensively throughout the Indian sub-continent, Atlas being substituted for the Indian Yaksa in the monuments of the Sunga around the 2nd century BCE.

It is written in the Harivamsa Purana for Pusyamitra Sunga that an Audbhijja Kaashyapa Dwija Senani will spread the tradition of Yajna again.

Though there are few sources for the late Indo-Greek history, Antialcidas is known from an inscription left on a pillar ( the Heliodorus pillar ), which was erected by his ambassador Heliodorus at the court of the Sunga king Bhagabhadra at Vidisha, near Sanchi.

Mauryan Empire's decline began 60 years after Ashoka's rule ended, and it dissolved in 185 BC with the foundation of the Sunga Dynasty in Magadha.

The Sunga dynasty was established in 185 BC, about fifty years after Ashoka's death, when the king Brihadratha, the last of the Mauryan rulers, was assassinated by the then commander-in-chief of the Mauryan armed forces, Pusyamitra Sunga, while he was taking the Guard of Honour of his forces.

Its decline began 60 years after Ashoka's rule ended, and it dissolved in 185 BC with the foundation of the Sunga Dynasty in Magadha.

The Shunga dynasty was established in 185 BCE, about 50 years after Ashoka's death, when the emperor Brhadratha, the last of the Mauryan rulers, was assassinated by the then commander-in-chief of the Mauryan armed forces, Pusyamitra Sunga, while he was taking the Guard of Honour of his forces.

Lenin regarded colonialism as the root cause of imperialism, as imperialism was distinguished by monopoly capitalism via colonialism and as Lyal S. Sunga explains: " Vladimir Lenin advocated forcefully the principle of self-determination of peoples in his " Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination " as an integral plank in the programme of socialist internationalism " and he quotes Lenin who contended that " The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation.

The tree was again cut down by King Pusyamitra Sunga in the 2nd century BC, and by King Shashanka in 600 AD.

Uttar Pradesh was home to many powerful empires of ancient and medieval India, including the Magadha, Nanda, Mauryan, Sunga, Kushan, Gupta, Gurjara, Rashtrakuta, Pala and Mughal empires.

The stupa was vandalized at one point sometime in the 2nd century BCE, an event some have related to the rise of the Sunga emperor Pusyamitra Sunga who overtook the Mauryan Empire as an army general.

During the later rule of the Sunga, the stupa was expanded with stone slabs to almost twice its original size.

The last ruler of the Sunga dynasty was overthrown by Vasudeva of the Kanva dynasty in 75 BC.

Brihadrata was assassinated in 185 BCE during a military parade, by the commander-in-chief of his guard, the Brahmin general Pusyamitra Sunga, who then took over the throne and established the Sunga dynasty.

On the 110 BCE Heliodorus pillar in Vidisha in Central India, the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas, who had sent an ambassador to the court of the Sunga king Bhagabhadra, was also qualified as " Yona ".

Buddhism flourished under his reign and that of his successors, precisely as it was being oppressed by the Indian dynasty of the Sunga in the East.

In India, the Maurya Dynasty was overthrown around 185 BC when Pusyamitra Sunga, the commander-in-chief of Mauryan Imperial forces and a Brahmin, assassinated the last of the Mauryan emperors Brhadrata.

The Sunga Empire () or Shunga Empire was a Aryan dynasty from Magadha that controlled vast areas of the Indian Subcontinent from around 185 to 73 BCE.

The dynasty was established by Pusyamitra Sunga, after the fall of the Maurya Empire.